The COP 27 reality checks

It’s trite but true that every single meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is “the most urgent and important of them all.”

We have long gone past the debate over the human contribution to the challenge, and we are not talking about a situation that’s improving. The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, for example, has described the latest State of the Global Climate report as “a chronicle of climate chaos.”

Urgency and high priority are particularly the case in Sharm El-Sheikh at COP 27, because this is a time of reckoning when it comes to a number of key pillars of an unfolding global crisis.

The costs, of all types, of a joint response are however not being equitably distributed and the climate crisis is now characterised by a mix of exogenous and domestically fuelled political, economic and socio-cultural injustices.

Even so, the conclusions of a UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) report tabled at COP 27 find that “a sole focus on positive climate finance flows” in itself is “insufficient to meet the overarching purpose and goals of the Paris Agreement.”

“Finance flows,” the report says, “must integrate climate risks into decision-making and avoid increasing the likelihood of negative climate outcomes.”

Yes, there have been increases in financial flows but even the SCF is proposing that mere financial bean-counting, as instructive as it is, is inadequate to assess the real risks being engaged by developing countries.

There is also the fact we need to face when it comes to our “1.5 to Stay Alive” slogan – a Caribbean war cry integrated as a main target of the Paris Agreement as a cap on post-industrial global emissions.

The current COP will most likely signal the failure of the campaign. Sadly, it is the scientists, not the politicians or activists, who are most likely to lay the sombre news on the table.

Last week, The Economist boldly declared it was “time for some realism” regarding the 1.5 degree threshold for disaster.

The magazine urged activists and countries to pronounce honestly on the matter so that delegates in the halls of decision-making can be “chastened by failure (and) not lulled by false hope.” As highly vulnerable states, we too need to transition to the next level of advocacy and negotiation.

For, even as the developed world experiences the occurrence of extreme weather events, there is no guarantee it will suddenly dawn on them that, even in their respective backyards, the matter requires the interventions of all.

It is well known that the entire process has been characterised by the broken promises of wealthy countries, and major emitters, on the financing of survival measures for the most vulnerable nations.

Another reality check is that our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), as important as they are (and as locked into our own commitments and entitlements as they have been) are turning out to be of marginal value in the general scheme of things.

For one, and no matter what some activists and politicians claim, they were never expected to more than microscopically affect gross global emissions. Their real value resides in the promotion of more enlightened environmental management practices which should be par for the course in any event.

A rallying call, in these matters, to “save the planet” sells the t-shirts and dramatises the banner campaigns, but such activities are of more value in the process of saving ourselves from collective suicide. The climate crisis envisages murder.

Don’t get me wrong, the beach clean-ups and tree replanting activities are very important to the survival game, but they have little bearing in the context of difficult political negotiations that tap into wider global assets and address geo-political posturing.

This is the value of COP 27 which is first and foremost a political event, meant to be guided by science. When I attended COP 17 in Durban 11 years ago, one show-boating international NGO had an activist rappel down a multi-storey hotel to unveil a banner. Some of our own folks looked on jealously.

It may have helped earn media attention, fresh funding, and applause. But that was it, even as the true warriors infinitely more boldly engaged overwhelming odds around the conference table.

This time around, as T&T turns up alongside energy sector new-comers Guyana and Suriname, there can be expected to be far more intense reality-checking and nuancing of the slogans and catch-phrases. No single t-shirt or banner can capture the meaning.

Our pyramids of needs and assets must however now more fully occupy centre stage in Egypt. Important truths need to be told; reality checks explored.